Reflections

Today was another beautiful day. I’m rested and ready to get back to home and work.

What a beautiful day!!! I don’t care that it is gray, misty and gloomy. I don’t care that I have to spray myself with outdoor perfume aka mosquito spray. Why? Because when we take the RV out on a trip we are away from our regular weekend routine. If I were at home I would be cleaning house and washing clothes. But today, I’m riding my bike though the forest trails, napping and reading.

I saw this yesterday when we took a bike ride. It was standing up so straight and tall. The moral of this picture is always take a camera because the shot will not always be there.😣

I am so happy October 15 has come and gone. For me this is the official end of tax season. Yes, I do have a couple of tax filings but not near the amount that I have to do for October 15. I usually start working on Saturdays in the middle of August and I add Sunday afternoon in September.

To celebrate I am resting and relaxing. Here is the view from my mobile vacation home aka my travel trailer.

It is wonderfully quiet…..no clients and no phones. I think it is time for some reading and then an afternoon nap! 😎

Camp fire time after a meal of silver turtles.

I love to read free books.  Anytime a book is advertised as free I am quick to download it.  What has this have in common with worldview?  I was cleaning up some files on the computer and I came across this free book I downloaded titled “What’s Your Worldview” by James N. Anderson.

I learned that a worldview is how a person sees the world.

Your worldview represents your most fundamental beliefs and assumptions about the universe you inhabit. It reflects how you would
answer all the “big questions” of human existence, the fundamental
questions we ask about life, the universe, and everything.

James N. Anderson

Now to make this book even more interesting is that it is a “choose your own adventure” book.  I was quite fascinated with a book formatted this way and it reminds me of the flowcharts I use at work to make decisions on certain tax returns.

I did go through the questions and did not like where I ended up in my worldview.  From a quick online search, the internet does say that a worldview can be changed but it is hard.

Here it is….my worldview…..Christianity.  No surprise there.  I have been attending worship services and bible classes since the day I was born.  However, I still had one more question to answer.

Do good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell?

In the book, after the question is written to author then goes and explains some ideas about what he means by the question.

Think back to the Goodness Question: you agreed that some things are objectively
good or bad. This fits perfectly with a Christian worldview, in which
God is the ultimate standard of goodness. Good people are those who
truly love God, the ultimate good, and love their fellow humans, who
are made in the image of God. Conversely, bad people are those who
fall short of loving God and their fellow humans as they should.
In keeping with the teachings of Jesus, Christians also believe in
heaven and hell. The Bible refers to heaven as “eternal life”: never ending bliss in the presence of God. The dire alternative is hell, which might well be described as “eternal death”: permanent separation from God and everything that is good.
But what determines your final destination? One very common
view is simply this: good people go to heaven and bad people go to
hell. Do you agree? Is eternal life the reward for those of us who live a
good enough life here and now?

James A. Anderson

Good people are those who truly love God and bad people are those who fall short of loving God?  My first quick answer is “yes”…the “good” people who love God are those going to heaven and the “bad” people that that don’t love God are going to hell. Everyone knows that the first answer is always correct? That yes answer lead me to the worldview of Pelagianism.  What in the world is that????

Pelagianism gets its name from Pelagius, a monk who lived in
Rome in the fifth century. Pelagius taught that humans enter this
world completely untainted by sin and with perfect freedom to choose
between good and evil. We aren’t born sinful, but we can become sinful by failing to follow God’s moral laws and Christ’s moral example.
Pelagius held that heaven is basically the reward for a good life. If you
follow the example of Jesus and live a good moral life, you’ll receive
eternal life. God’s help (“divine grace”) is available for those who need
it, but the basic principle is that the way to get to heaven is by doing
your level best to love God and love others. In other words, divine
grace isn’t strictly needed to get to heaven—and the less you fall back
on it the better!

James A. Anderson

Pelagius was excommunicated from the church in 418 AD.   Why was he excommunicated? Pelagius was denying that salvation was a free gift from God, not from living good lives.

Upon a little more research on the internet, there is also a worldview called Semi-Pelagianism, but this one was not addressed in the book.

The semi-Pelagians believed in the universality of original sin as a corruptive force in man. They also believed that without God’s grace this corruptive force could not be overcome, and they therefore admitted the necessity of grace for Christian life and action.

Encyclopedia Britannica

So what is a Christian worldview?

  According to the Christian worldview, there is a personal God who
is perfect in goodness, knowledge, and power. God created the entire
universe out of nothing and continually sustains it.We humans
were uniquely created in his image to live in personal love relationships with him and with our fellow humans.It therefore follows that there are objective moral standards for human life: God’s good and wise commandments, which can be summarized in terms of loving him and loving our neighbors.

Tragically, however, we humans rebelled against our Creator and
flouted his perfect moral laws. By doing so, we spoiled God’s creation,
corrupted ourselves, and placed ourselves under his righteous judgment. We are all rebels at heart and deserve only condemnation, yet out of his great love and mercy God sent a Savior, in the person of his divine Son, Jesus Christ, to restore us and reconcile us to God. Jesus accomplished this by his sacrificial death on the cross for our sins and his resurrection from the dead. God has revealed this salvation plan
through his prophets, his apostles, and (of course) Jesus himself.
These revelations are recorded in the Bible, which consists of the Old
and New Testaments.

James A. Anderson

What???  I believe and was taught all those things in the Christian worldview.  I suppose the book has been a success.  How? By making me look at my “worldview” so I can understand how to relate with others and more importantly learn about different ways people think.

September is going to be a busy month. I have the September 15 tax deadline..ugh!!!. Overtime hours means less time for fun stuff but more money. It is a good thing because painters are coming to paint the outside of our home. Same color scheme — blue and light brown. I think the blue and brown brings out those colors in the brick. Done of the homes in my neighborhood are painting the outside bricks. The homes do look nice but I not sure if once you paint the brick if you can ever go back to the original brick color.

Other events for the month. My son is having is 31st birthday. My sister is having her 60th birthday. I will be making a trip to Corpus Christi to take my mum to her cancer doctor. (Pray for good bloodwork.) My hubby will be celebrating Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. A very busy month.

The day ended with a rainbow…and if you look closely you might see the double rainbow.

This weekend we decided to take our camper to Brazos Bend State Park. This park is not too far from the house. The plan is to determine if this is a park that we can go to for short get aways when I am in the middle of the long hours of tax season. Wonderful Hubby drove to the park early Friday afternoon and set up the camper in a wonderful spot. The park rangers told us the park will be full this weekend. But our campsite seems like it will still be relatively private. The camper is set in such a way that we are surrounded by trees and still can not see the other campsites. I arrived later in the day. I arrived early enough to take a short bike ride before the sun went down. Our plan is to stay until Monday. Then dear Hubby will break camp while I wake up early and start my workweek. We will see how it goes…. This morning it has been wonderful to read and drink my coffee leisurely. I am reading “The Devil’s Lair” by David Wiseheart. It was a free book that I picked to read from Bookbub. The book is loosely based on Dante’s Inferno. Below are some quotes from the book.

There is only on command, Love God. All else is commentary…. If we love God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might, there is no question of obedience. There is only love…. Hell is the absence of God.

This morning we went on an interpretive hike. In the afternoon a guided 5 mile bike ride and this.evening we looked at the stars with the Fort Bend Astronomy Club members. Here are some pictures to document the day.

I knew it was a Monday when I arrived at the gym and the pool was closed. I’m not a happy camper.  So I begin to debate with myself….should I put on my walking shoes and walk or pull weeds in the flower bed? Finally, I decide to pull weeds. I have been wanting to do this for some time but I always put it off due to afternoon showers. Really, the reason is I’m just too tired after working all day. So, I finished 45 minutes of weeding….I look at my shoes….one foot for gardening, the other for walking. Yep, it is a Monday.😆